New economics

The world of economics is in meltdown. There are a good many books that analyse some of the causes, but a comprehensive overview is yet to appear. This was the purpose behind my website www.metaeconomics.co.uk which I started in 2009, but events since then have called for endless updating and revision, and revolutions are still ongoing, so I have given up and left it in a very unsatisfactory state. It should ideally have been structured as an e-book, divided into a series of brief introductions to key issues, with downloadable articles appended dealing with the themes in more detail. The really “wicked problem”, as organisation theorists would say, is what is to come after the final collapse and what ideally and realistically should be the plan for a global restructuring.

Venturing where angels fear to tread, I have hopes of making an initial attack on this multi-headed problem, which, like the mythical Greek monster, seems to grow two new heads for every one that is chopped of. The intended title of this future book is Metanomics [note, not metaeconomics], a word invented to clearly make the point that the world is moving into an era where a whole new paradigm is now called for in order to fulfil the goals for which the science, or would-be science, of classical economics was founded. That goal might variously be described as prosperity or social well-being, but in a globalising world it is of the greatest significance that the short title of Adam Smith’s foundational work is The Wealth of Nations. Economics then, and still, is conceived as a zero sum game: the aim of the game was to increase the nation’s store of gold in competition with others. This is most odd, since trade by its very nature is cooperative.

Since the foundational period of economics in the middle half of the nineteenth century there have been the most radical changes. To mention only three, the limited liability company acquired legal existence and has rapidly grown to a size where many transnational companies today are far bigger than most nation states in terms of revenue, Marxism has challenged Smith’s “invisible hand” as the mechanism which drives economic activity, deficit financing has gone out of control and gold has been discarded as the ultimate measure of value. I will draw back from plunging into the morass of complexities that has emerged since World War II, noting only that past and present theory unthinkingly assumes the economics of growth, which clearly cannot go on for ever, and our political leaders have no clue about how to plan a sustainable economy. Perhaps most ominous is the demographics of an aging population. This is a ticking time bomb that must within the next half century blow conventional economic theory and practice to bits. Indeed, it is already happening before our eyes, with many pension schemes quite suddenly unable to honour their future financial commitments. To look only at the United States, as the clearest example, there are dozens of huge pension funds which are projected to go bankrupt within the next fifteen or twenty years. What then will happen to the American economy, when one fifth of the population have no money to spend? What will happen to society when it has to support a generation of penniless pensioners. We are the unfortunate witnesses of an economic Armageddon now starting to unfold.

Of the three PDF’s below, which selectively view parts of this state of affairs, “The End of Economics” was originally published in my collection Jehovah and Hyperspace in 2002 and while it is oversimple and needs updating, its main argument is still valid. “Economic Slavery and Economic Terrorism” has been abstracted from my Metaeconomics website with minor changes. “Civilisation and Its Enemies” is unpublished and has been included here because there is an urgent need to understand how the so-called Deep State, more particularly in America, is driving global politics and economics.